2006: A (Belated) Spain Odyssey

Before I commence this Blog entry I’ll make it known that Jo’s camera died about 5 days into the trip and thus any photo’s found in this entry are the collaborated efforts of our travelling companions, who went to the exact same places and saw exactly the same things that we did… thanks Tori, Nick & Ian :)

It all began one dark and stormy night in London… well not really that stormy… but it was dark (unlike the other nights in London). Joanna and Jeremy still hadn’t packed for their big Spanish adventure, but Jo had designated the few remaining hours into packing time and sleeping time! With the deadline fast approaching they set to the packing with vigour. 20 minutes later Jeremy had finished packing and began to survey the chaotic terrain that was Jo’s side of the room…

… Several hours pass…

… Jeremy is struck by a thought of mammoth proportions. “Jo? Do you realise that we have to get up in 3 hours?”… and thus begins our holiday to España! Olé!

While we did many exciting things in Spain it is impossible to talk about them all, so let me run through the highlights!

Valencia (locally pronounced; Balenthia)

Jo and I stayed in the ‘old city’ of Valencia, this city has an awesome Spanish feel about it (surprise surprise). Architecture was amazing, especially some of the cathedrals and the old silk market. Siesta is a very real phenomenon in Valencia where everything basically shuts down for at least 3 hours between 2 and 5pm. We had our first taste of ‘Horchata’ or ‘Orxata’ which is a very refreshing drink made of water and crushed tiger-nuts, some people describe it as drinking milk and sand… But Jo and I really liked it, delicious! We also had ‘Agua de Valencia’ which turns out isn’t local tap water after all but a rather potent mix of Orange juice, champagne and 3 generously poured but random spirits.

We checked out the bull fighting Museum and the bull ring which exhibits the uniforms of some of Valencia’s most famous Matadors (Bull-fighters) still bearing the original rips and old blood stains that presumably resulted in that matadors death. Well when you don’t speak the language you have to do your own equations

Picture of Matador + Ornate Uniform (complete with rips and blood stains) + Picture of Matador doing a very graceless impression of a shish-kebab = Picture of Matador’s State funeral (as they say maths is the universal language)

We also made a couple of trips to the beach and soaked up some much needed saltwater, sand, sun and cigarette butts! No offence Valencia but I’d rather swim with blue bottles than cigarette butts any day!

Fast forwarding through an 8 hour train trip to Granada with half a train of rowdy teenagers, who could have been on their schoolies trip if it hadn’t been for all their mums going along with them, well actually maybe they were anyway!

Granada.

Granada was by far my favourite City in Spain, especially the Albayzin which is the oldest part of the city. Tiny cobblestone alley-ways crisscross each other in what was meant to be the busy city centre of ancient Granada. Apparently a wide road in the Albayzin is a road where two donkeys can walk past each other unhindered… Granada was the last Muslim kingdom in Spain and of course was conquered by the Christian Monarchs; as a result the city is full of evidence exposing attempts by both religions to lay claims to the city and its people.

Jo and I spent 5 hours walking through the ‘Alhambra’ which is the ancient Islamic palace perched on the highest hill overlooking Granada. The inside of the Nasrid Palaces includes beautiful and ornate Islamic architecture that focuses on a worship of water through fountains, pools and gardens. Then from the top of the Alcazaba (the military tower) you get a complete view of the entire city, a view that extends all the way to the beginning of the Sierra Nevada desert!

Jo and I also watched a Flamenco performance that included dinner and a minibus to a viewing point that overlooks the Alhambra at night. It was nice but we were suckered like the worst kind of tourists for that evening. Speaking of getting suckered heed this warning “Avoid old women bearing rosemary!”. These old women are very good at stopping you in the street against your will and before you know it you’ll have a sprig of rosemary in your hand. They then proceed to read your other palm for you without actually looking at it or pointing at any definite lines (to be honest you probably don’t even need a hand for them to give you the palm reading) then once they have finished speaking to you in a language they know you don’t understand (she probably told me I had a face like a moose), they give you the internationally recognised sign for ‘money’ the old rubbing of the thumb and forefingers. Being an honest person I feel I owe her something, if not for the palm reading then at least for her ability to ignore every attempt I made to fend her off before she got to the end of that highly scientific performance. So I pull out of my wallet a big fat shining 2 euro coin thinking myself generous when the old woman refuses and starts reaching into the note section of my wallet!! Outrageous!!! Just then I am approached by a second old woman who had cornered Jo and demand I pay for Jo as well (because Jo was smart enough to leave her purse back at the hostel). Well at this I had to laugh and shoved the 2 euros into the hand of my woman as deftly as she had shoved the rosemary into mine and turned my back on the pair of them receiving a professional glaring… I probably got myself cursed with that move, but nothing’s shrivelled up and fallen off yet.

Madrid.Slightly less exciting as we were only there for two nights. We visited the Prado art Gallery and saw some rather famous paintings. Then went out at night and bought alcohol by the Litro! Oh and we also met up with Tori, Nick and Ian who would accompany us on the rest of our trip! It was because of their influence that we broke away from our original plan of going to Pamplona for the beginning of the San Fermin festival and instead went with them to San Sebastian on the Northern coast of Spain. Now the fun really begins…

San Sebastian.

Due to the last minute planning of our arrival in San Sebastian, or if you have a patriotic lisp ‘Than Thebathtian’, we had yet to organise accommodation. The adventure that is now told was affectionately titled “Thleepleth in Than Thebathtian” by those who lived it… (The following has been plagerised directly from Ian’s Blog as we saw no point in re-writing the story, when such a well written piece of work already existed)

As we arrived in San Sebastian we had no accommodation booked, and knew that arriving at 7pmish our chances of finding any were slim, but we were backpackers heading towards a beach town during the hot hot summer in Spain, and Nick and Tori had told us exciting stories of sleeping through rush-hour in Munich train station on a plasticated table cloth. We'll be fine, we can sleep on the beach, what could possibly go wrong?

View out the bus window as we approached San Seb:

Now, everybody knows that the rain in spain falls mainly on the plains, and whilst I can't prove this wrong, I do maintain that the legalese small print of "mainly", as opposed to "exclusively", is underemphasized to the point of misleadingity (perhaps a new word - google search finds zero hits).

Fearing the rain for its capacity to make us wet and sleeping difficult, we inhaled some burgers and set off around the old town looking for a room. San Seb old town has heaps of little pensions, basically an apartment with dorm rooms rented out by the resident, like a tiny hostel. The first five or six we buzzed we got no answer or an abrupt "we're full". But then we struck gold, or at least tin, but tin that eventually evaded us, as tin is wont to do.

We were buzzed up to an old lady in a dressing gown who apparently had a room, but spoke no English. Tori's knowledge of Italian served us well, and eventually we figured out that she would take two of us, and her manfriend the other three, put up on crappy beds in a bare room for 25 euro each a night ($50 aussie).

We went to inspect manfriend's room, a few blocks away, which was even worse. Thinking the price a bit steep, we discussed amongst ourselves, and agreed to try to talk her down to 20 each, and then there was a brief but fierce rock-paper-scissors battle to decide who got the crap beds, and who got the even crapper beds. We then went back to the woman, only to find that in the meantime she had given the room to someone else.

Back on the streets with nowhere to sleep, rain not heavy but lingering in the background.

For the next part of this story, you would do well to look at the annotated photograph located here, perhaps you could open it in another window, and refer to it as needed.

A couple of us sat and minded bags in the street while the others went off to search for a sleeping place. They were gone a long time, and apparently they journeyed far and wide, but they came back marching proud with victorious glints in their eyes.

They had found a long portico type thing at the beach (location "A"). There were a few bums sleeping at one end, but it was quite long so we headed for the non-bum end and sat ourselves down on the concrete.

Singalong story time at Location A:

After sitting and chatting for a while, quite pleased with our location, we started thinking about getting out the sleeping bags and the plasticated table cloth and getting some shut-eye. We witnessed a domestic between a bum couple and in the process learnt what we assume is a terrible swear word in Basque. Or perhaps the name of the guy. Anyway, after a while the cops came through and started hassling the bums trying to move them on. We watched all this with fingers crossed, but slowly but surely they worked their way along the line to us.

We decided honesty was best, and explained our situation. The police were really very nice, very sweet and kind. They said "well, we can't let you sleep here, it's forbidden. But what we can do is tell you an area where you can sleep. The good news is: there are no police patrols, so you won't be moved along. The bad news is: there are no police patrols, so you'll have to be careful".

The area they spoke of was the other end of the beach past the tunnel, occupying the lower-right-hand corner of the annotated photograph. There was no covered section here, but at that stage it had stopped raining so we thought we'd take our chances in the open.

We were going to sleep on the beach amongst the rows of deck chairs, but then Jeremy and I went for a pre-sleep walk up the beach, and found the building marked with the red "B" in the photograph. It was kinda a surf-club/restaurant/kiosk type thing, but we noticed it had a rooftop dining area which was not locked. We snuck up to have a scout around and, finding it to our approval, went back for the others.

It had no roof, but had walls which provided good protection from the wind, which we would have suffered from on the beach. By now I think it was about 1am, and we lay out our sleeping bags between the rows of tables and chairs and tried to get some sleep. The floor was metal with those nonstick bumpy bits on it, and we had no sleeping mats, so it was a bit uncomfortable and bruising, but we all got a little bit of sleep, or at least some rest.

Rooftop restaurant at location B:

At, I think, about 3am it started raining again. We were slow to move, not wanting to get wet but tired and warm in our sleeping bags. Except for Tori and Nick, who didn't have sleeping bags and were getting pretty cold and wet. We slowly started packing away our stuff, kinda hoping the rain would pass and we would go back to sleep.

But then, how it hadn't happened earlier I'll never know, but one of us set off some sort of motion detector and big bright floodlights went on everywhere, blinding us in a most unwelcome way. As we recovered our vision we realised there were surveillance cameras everywhere, and we were sitting there like deer in the proverbials. So we quickly gathered together our stuff and snuck down the stairs, giving quite a shock to a bunch of spanish guys who were sitting downstairs having some quiet beers, and certainly didn't expect five backpackers to come down bleary eyed carrying sleepingbags.

At this stage the rain was coming down, so we made straight for the only cover we knew of, the pedestrian tunnel marked with the yellow "C" in the photograph. About 3:30 am now, and we lay out our sleeping bags on the cold hard tiles and tried to sleep.

At 5:00am, Sarah called me from Australia having forgotten about the time difference wanting to ask about this or that detail for Steves wedding. I wasn't really in the mood for a chat, and I think I made that fairly clear but I later apoligized and it was this phone call that gave me aussie number that helped me get new glasses in Barcelona (as per previous post).

Early morning at Location C:

Some were lucky enough to sleep. We stayed in bed until about 6:30 when the disgusted looks from morning commuters passing through the tunnel got too much. Then packed up our gear and went off to eat something and find some goddamned accomodation for the next night.

Packing up stuff at Location C:

Just after sunrise, as we went back to town to find a room:

We found a room at "Pension Aussie", but couldn't move in until 12:30 after cleaning.

The proprietor, a slightly strange Aussie ex-pat, tried to convince us we should see the city and shouldn't sleep, but as soon as the clock hit 12:30 we were straight to bed for a much-needed afternoon slumber. Like logs we was.

I'm not sure if I had slept at all during the night. I didn't think I did, but perhaps I did drop in and out of sleep a bit in the tunnel. Either way, after so much bone-bruising concrete and metal, the softness of a mattress and a pillow that afternoon felt like heaven itself, I was so thankful I nearly found religion. Except I couldn't find one that worshipped comfortable bedding.
- Thanks for that Ian you just saved us a few hours :)

And that ladies and gentlemen is why we were “Thleepless in Than Thebathian”.

Pamplona

Well Pamplona was of course the most exciting part of the trip! After months of anticipation and anxiety Jeremy was finally taking part in one of the most dangerous activities in the world. So dangerous in fact that it is one of two things not covered by any form of travel insurance, the other thing being BASE jumping! Upon arrival in Pamplona we are met by an army of red a-white clones… wait… on second consideration it just appears to be about 1 million people all dressed exactly the same! Let me run through some good and bad things about Pamplona and the San Fermin Festival

Good	Bad
Arriving in Pamplona	Smelling Pamplona
Conforming to the festival dress code	Wearing those same clothes from three days straight, without showers.
Joining a festival band as they patrol the streets singing songs and asking people on balconies to throw water at them	Getting red wine thrown on you instead of water
Finding a place to sleep for the night	That place being in the middle of a round-a- bout
Running with the bulls!!!!	When the bull next to you falls over and gets up looking for someone to blame!
Not getting gored by said bull	All the drunk/drugged idiots who run without sleep! MORONS!
Getting hugged by Jo when she realises that you didn’t die	Coming down from adrenaline high
Finding our same sleeping spot free again	Ian getting robbed during the night for his cheap digital watch and his prescription glasses – such inconsiderate thieves!
Getting to sleep in	Waking up late because Ian’s cheap digital watch was our alarm clock and… well… read above
Getting our cameras out of storage in time to catch the running again	Having to fight our way to the front of the fence to stick our cameras through and catch just the barest glimpse of the race.
Not getting our cameras smashed by the police who forbid the filming of the event unless you paid for a press pass!	Eating another bloody Boca… Bocadarell… a friggin roll with cheese and ham on it for breakfast… again!
Getting the hell out of Pamplona	The anarchy that ensues when the police just don’t bother

In summary Pamplona and the San Fermin festival is something that you must do once in your life… but only once! 800 000 people consuming 3 million ‘litros’ of alcohol does not make for a pretty sight, nor does it make a pretty smell! Truly one of the most disgusting places I have ever been where people actually ‘choose’ to make it that way!

Street Party in Pamplona

Agua!

The Bull Run

Three Lucky Survivers

Bayonne

Well after scrambling for a bus out of Pamplona we checked our calendar 09/07/2006 hmm… something important is happening today… umm… (Ding: cue indicative cartoon light bulb) World Cup Final tonight! France Vs Italy! So with that spontaneous thought in mind and only being 40 minutes from the French border we jumped on a train and headed for the town of Bayonne on the South-West coast of France! We got a room for the night and settled into a little pub with a big screen ready to support France with all our Aussie might! Because it’s not like we could actually support those diving Italians! Unfortunately there is no real justice in the world and Italy didn’t lose the World Cup, but at least, as Australians, we felt a little better for being knocked out of the competition by the eventual winners. Well because the final was the only reason we came to France we got back on our train and headed down to San Sebastian again. Unfortunately buses and trains to Barcelona were not really a feasible option so we grabbed ourselves a little Seat Leon (type of car) and set off on the wrong/right side of the road to Barcelona!!!!!

Barcelona

Well we spent our final few days in Spain in the city of Barcelona. We checked out La Rambla, the main street in Barcelona, and visited a few buildings by Barcelona’s famous architect Antoni Gaudi, including La Sagrada Familia. Had a hostel bed that wouldn’t stay mine, everyone else seemed to think they could move my stuff off it and put there stuff on it, Weird! We also met up with some of Ian’s friends from back in Australia, who had just come up out of Tunisia, and it turned out that Tori and Nick knew as well! Small world! But all in all just took it easy before coming home to London.

Cool Fountain...

La Sagrada Familia

THE END! - Phew!